Half the Truth is a Full Lie

I wish I could remember all the great “sayings” I’ve learned through the years, but unfortunately that’s not the case. However, one pithy little quote has stuck with me ever since I heard it and it goes like this, “Half the truth is a full lie.”

This quote is sadly what is taking place in much of the church world today. People hear half the truth and the net gain is a full lie. We lie to people when we only teach about God’s grace, love, mercy and forgiveness. This is what I call, “A Lopsided Gospel.” There is no doubt that the world needs to know about God’s omni-benevolence, but the world also needs to know about God’s wrath, justice and other not so “seeker friendly” topics such as: hell, sin and repentance.

Like two sides of a coin, on the one side you have truth and on the other side grace. All grace churches and no truth slip into heresy, whereas all truth churches with no grace slip into dead orthodoxy. We want the paradox of grace and truth married together. I fear in today’s culture we are losing truth in the name of abusing grace. When grace gets stripped of truth grace no longer becomes grace, but fluff. What makes grace beautiful is placing it against the backdrop of God’s truth. When these two pillars are taught expect to see two reactions: deep brokenness and or radical resistance. Know this—both reactions are better than the non-reaction of complacency that we see taking place today.

In fact, I recently thought about teaching a series in the future called, “An Unpopular Series” with the message titles as follows:

Week 1 Judgment Day is Coming
Week 2 Homosexuality is a Sin
Week 3 Hell is Real
Week 4 Abortion is Murder
Week 5 The Doctrine of Election is Mysterious, yet Biblical
Week 6 Money Can Destroy
Week 7 Suffering is Good For Us
Week 8 No Fruit, No Jesus

Yeah, I know what you are thinking, “Great series to run a bunch of people off.” I assure you that would not be my heart, but I do believe God’s Word must be presented without apology. If you ever want to discover who God’s true disciples are it comes when grace PLUS truth is taught. What we need today more than ever is not a Lop-Sided Gospel, but a Fully Orbed Gospel. One that doesn’t leave out half the truth, rather one that declares the “whole counsel of God.” One of the great benefits of teaching through books of the Bible is it forces pastor’s to face issues they may be tempted to skip over. By never teaching through a book of the Bible it can make you wonder, “pastor do you really believe ALL of God’s Word?” So next time you’re given an opportunity to share the truth, remember the Gospel is not lopsided, rather it’s fully orbed and drenched with both truth and grace.